The invention relates generally to computer systems and more particularly to audio features of computer systems.
Audio features are swiftly becoming important in computer systems. Many computers have a compact disk (CD) player capable of playing musical CD's or computer video games. Also, recent innovations in video technology have resulted in the advent of digital video disks (DVD's) that may store large amounts of video data including full length motion pictures. DVD players are now being included in some computer systems. Additionally, computer video games are a popular use for computer systems. Each of these technologies utilize the audio features of computer systems. While the audio output of computer video games and CD's, etc. may be interesting and desirable to some computer users, others may not be quite as fond of the array of audio output generated by computers. In fact, computer system audio output may disturb others in the vicinity. For example, parents may be irritated by loud sounds generated by video games being played by their children on a computer.
Prior art audio systems include physical locks on speakers in an attempt to alleviate the previously mentioned problems. In these prior art systems, a key may be inserted into a lock on a speaker to change the volume level of the speaker. Unfortunately, the prior art audio systems require a physical lock having both mechanical and electronic parts to be included in a speaker. Additionally, the locking mechanism sets the volume at a certain level and does not allow the level to be raised or lowered without using a physical key. Thus, it would be beneficial to provide an alternative technique to limit the audio volume of computer systems.